The amount of data available for making business and personal decisions has grown rapidly as networking and other communications media have enabled access to large stores of information. To make use of this information, a class of workers, called “information workers” has developed. Information workers are tasked with developing analysis techniques that can be applied to data so that the data can be presented in a way that supports informed decision making.
In some instances, information workers use documents to capture information and knowledge about analysis of that data. Such documents may be of different types. For example, a word processing document may be primarily organized according to paragraphs or sections. Though, a word processing document may include objects, such as tables. In contrast, a spreadsheet document may be organized as a table with rows and columns of cells. Each cell may contain text or numbers. In some instances, cells contain formulas that can compute a value based on values in other cells or other spreadsheets.
These documents can incorporate “visualizations.” A visualization may be a graphical object linked to a data set. Values in the data set may control the appearance of visual characteristics of the graphical object when it is rendered on a graphical user interface. Charts are one example of visualizations. For example, the EXCEL spreadsheet program allows a chart to be linked to data in cells of the spreadsheet such that the data is displayed graphically as an embedded object in the spreadsheet.
In some instances, the visualization may be interactive. The visualization may include a control that a user may manipulate to change some aspect of a data set associated with the interactive visualization. A slider is one example of an interactive visualization. The slider may be positioned based on a value in the data set. By interacting through the graphical user interface with the slider, the user may specify a new value for that value in the data set.
Regardless of the specific format of the document, once created, it may be distributed to others who may use it for analyzing data and making decisions. For example, an information worker may create a spreadsheet that captures knowledge about running a department in a large company. The spreadsheet may be distributed to managers of various departments, who may then enter data into cells of the spreadsheet. Each manager may then gain insights related to their department by viewing graphs that have been incorporated into the spreadsheet by the information worker. As one example, managers may view a chart showing profitability of their departments.